(1). I have been working in the CFD field since the early 70's. And I have worked through various companies, large and small, private and government. The cost of software was never an issue. (2). There are always codes around for engineers to use it. And the most critical issue is : know how to use these codes, in-house or commercial, properly and be able to obtain "useful" results. (3). Some old versions of code have some problems, and when the new version is released, it comes with some new problems. The cost simply does not mean anything here. (4). In general, you can estimate the cost per license based on 10,000 to 20,000. In a company with several licenses, it is around 100,000 a year. (5). But then, if you are doing research in a school, or you can provide results to promote a particular code, I would say, the cost to use the code is almost nothing. And if you can provide new models or features to the code, then it is likely that they will be very good to you.

yeah trying to get costs out of those people is like trying to get teeth pulled. did they claim that they needed all the info so that they could customise the code for you? i've heard that softflo which makes a nice CFD code, flo++ (i have a demo copy) will give you upfront pricing (it's on their webpage! www.softflo.com) other than that i don't know of other companies that do this. if you're tired of the bull why not get something from a research organization like NASA or a DOD lab. if you're american the codes are free/really cheap. go to http://capella.Colorado.EDU/~laney/software.htm which has a good list of free codes from all over many of which are quite advanced. all of them are for compressible flow though.